TBILISI, August 22 – The White House has named Georgia among dozens of nations it says China uses as third-country routes to avoid US tariffs.
A White House report published on August 13, titled “The Great Transshipment Scam“, says Chinese-made goods are increasingly sent first to third countries before being exported to the United States.
According to the report, the goods can be repackaged, relabeled, minimally processed or accompanied by altered trade documents in the intermediary country. They can then enter the US market appearing to originate somewhere other than China, allowing exporters to qualify for lower tariffs, a technique called ‘transshipment’.
Georgia appears in the largest of three groups identified in the report, a category the White House calls “Small, Opportunistic Chinese Targets.” The same group includes Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Morocco and Uzbekistan. Other countries with larger trade flows, including Canada, India, Mexico, Japan and South Korea, are placed in separate categories.
The report does not mean that all goods passing through Georgia from China are involved in tariff evasion. It identifies Georgia as one of the jurisdictions where the White House sees an elevated risk that this type of trade diversion may take place.
The White House says the practice has expanded since Washington began imposing higher tariffs on Chinese goods in 2018. Estimates cited in the report put the annual value of illegal or suspected transshipment at between roughly USD 40 billion and USD 303 billion.
Using a central estimate of USD 75 billion a year, the administration says the practice may cost the United States tens of billions of dollars in lost government revenue and substantial economic output and employment. Those figures are estimates based on economic modelling rather than counts of individual shipments.
